


School Day

by Alys_Brauer, TAFKAB



Series: Chasing Stars [6]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Gen, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 20:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8223511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alys_Brauer/pseuds/Alys_Brauer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/TAFKAB
Summary: Leonard attends his first day at a Vulcan school.





	

Leonard didn’t have much time for exploring before the adults took his test results and placed him in a Vulcan school. 

“You’ll start tomorrow morning,” Eleanora patted his shoulder. “It may take a little adjusting, but Vulcan has the best schools in the galaxy. It’ll be worth it in the long run.”

“Best schools? Exactly how do they measure that?” Leonard muttered to himself when he was sure she’d gone. “Smug self-satisfaction quotient?”

He didn’t have any choice, though, so the next morning he showered and dressed. His mother nagged him to brush his hair and his teeth, and by departure time he shone, wearing an unfamiliar loose draped tunic and an uncomfortable pair of dark trousers complete with shiny black shoes.

“I miss my jeans,” he mourned. 

“You’ll fit in better if you look like a native.” David spoiled the effect by ruffling Leonard’s hair. 

He hadn’t known quite what to expect, but when he entered the sports-arena-sized complex, he stared across a vast floor pockmarked with recessed pits, each with a child in its center. A few robe-clad instructors prowled serenely around the perimeters, supervising without interacting. Leonard’s heart sank. What, he wouldn’t even get to have other kids around?

Of course, those other kids were Vulcans, so maybe isolation was a good thing after all.

Spock departed promptly, without a word, to take up his place in one of the pits and Leonard stepped forward with caution, not sure where to go.

“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here,” he muttered. Unfortunately he’d misjudged the sensitivity of Vulcan hearing. One of the teachers raised a brow in his direction.

“The proper quotation is _’Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate.’_ “ The teacher eyed him with asperity. “Can you identify its source?”

“Dante’s _Inferno_ ,” Leonard snapped back, drawing his spine straight.

“Canto? Line number?” The Vulcan paused for his answer, and Leonard swallowed, shaking his head. “Canto three, line nine,” the teacher informed him, then pulled out a padd, making a notation. Leonard watched his face appear on the screen.

“Does that really go in my permanent record?” Leonard stared at the Vulcan with some consternation. “Is there gonna be a test on this later?”

“Follow me to your instructional pod.” Apparently only students had an obligation to provide answers. Leonard suppressed a flare of irritation and followed.

The learning environment was apparently immersion-based, a plethora of screens surrounding Leonard entirely. He felt like a goldfish in a bowl, bombarded by information, required to move and turn every few moments in order to stay focused on the active terminal. Sonics vibrated his bones inside his skin; they were using both kinesthetic and subliminal educational enhancements, then, beaming stuff into his brain directly, bypassing even his ears. It pissed him the hell off.

He was woefully unprepared for the intensity of the experience, floundering as the machines peppered him with information and needled him with questions-- questions that progressed steadily in difficulty level after each correct answer, and appeared to build on every new scrap of information the lesson divulged. It wasn’t just rote memorization, either; he had to apply the new information to complex problem-solving. 

After only half an hour he was sweating, desperate, flailing to keep up, and an instructor came to the lip of his pod, staring down. It appeared to be a Vulcan female, the first one he’d seen. She descended into the bowl and adjusted the computers while Leonard waited, trying to catch his breath. When she left and the lesson resumed, the screens were only active in a semicircle and the pace of the lesson had decreased considerably. So had the speed of the difficulty increase.

“Great. Stuck in the slow section already.” Leonard chafed at the changes, his pride stinging. But there was no time for self-pity. Even with the new, slower regimen in place, he had to focus his full attention if he wanted to keep up. 

By lunchtime he was wrung out, and he looked for the least occupied table he could find, carrying his tray and setting it down in a quiet corner of the crowded room. There was no sign of Spock, or maybe he just couldn’t pick the other boy out from the thicket of smooth, gleaming black heads bent over trays, the students all clad in near-identical somber tunics and trousers. The girls were distinguishable only because they wore their hair long, usually looped in a complicated but severe style. None of them paid any attention to Leonard.

The buzz of conversation was muted, and after the lessons he almost found it restful. 

As he lifted his glass to drink, someone’s toe caught the leg of his chair and jostled him. He spilled juice down his front, patting frantically at his tunic with a napkin to wipe it off. He glanced around cautiously, unable to identify any particular offender among the fairly steady stream of children passing him on their way back and forth-- but he did see an elbow shoot out and impact roughly with another boy’s head several tables down the row, and that glimpse revealed the victim as Spock, who sat there with his hair mussed and his cheeks flushed faint green, grimly trying to ignore the incident.

Vulcan bullies?

Leonard set his glass down carefully and put his wet, wadded napkin on his tray, trying to make his brain parse the concept of an emotionless superbeing who found it worthwhile to inflict suffering on peers and inferiors. 

It was alarming any way he sliced it. 

A carefully constructed paper airplane sailed through the air, slim like a dart, and settled precisely on his tray. A few bits of writing showed through the folds.

He unfolded it reluctantly, finding the very message he’d expected: “Humans belong on Terra.”

 _Hell yeah, we do._ And if Leonard had been given any choice, he wouldn’t be sitting here sweating, feeling like he was made of lead, his tunic soaking wet, with an unspecified number of physically stronger, intellectually intimidating Vulcan racists on his tail.

He finished his lunch with care, looking out for further intimidation tactics, but no more were forthcoming. He made it back to his pit without any incidents, but he knew it wasn’t over. 

Next time he’d have to try to find a seat with his back to the wall.


End file.
